Why DUSU elections are just another ‘democratic’ exercise in the country

It’s all about caste considerations and big money.

WrittenBy:Arunabh Saikia
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Satinder Awana, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad’s (ABVP) presidential candidate for the upcoming Delhi University Student Union (DUSU) elections, is sipping Red Bull in the front seat of an SUV -– one of his campaign slogans is Fortuner me rawana Satinder Awana. I ask him if he had indeed smashed open the National Students’ Union of India’s (NSUI) presidential candidate’s skull earlier in the day, as alleged by some.

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The strapping Awana sizes me up for a moment before calmly saying no. “My route today morning was through South Delhi – and he was beaten up at PGDAV College. In fact, my car was attacked and my brother was injured,” he tells me. It was another Fortuner car, I assume, since this one carries no signs of being attacked a few hours earlier.

Awana has just finished campaigning in the university’s law faculty – an activity that entails his followers flinging pamphlets with his name in the air. Incidentally, the Lyngdoh Commission, whose guidelines are binding, categorically bars student unions from using any kind of printed material during campaigning.

That in a nutshell is what DUSU elections are all about –- a money-driven, testosterone-heavy exercise built upon the foundations of unapologetic casteism and unmistakable gender bias. Almost all 16 candidates nominated by the four major parties are either Jats or Gujjars.  Among the 16 candidates, there are just five women.

And if things were not already bad enough with the ABVP and the NSUI, there’s a new entrant in the fray –- the Aam Aadmi Party’s student wing, Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS).  The CYSS, according to most students I spoke to in the North campus of the university, has indulged in all the parochialism the NSUI and ABVP are infamous for, and some more.

Anmol Panwar, the CYSS’ vice-president and spokesperson, is a student in the university’s law faculty. When I ask him if he is an AAP member, he is surprised by the question. “The CYSS is the AAP’s student union,” he tells me, implying that it is only natural that he is a member. The Lyngdoh Commission explicitly calls “for disassociation of student elections and student representations from political parties”.

CYSS’ contempt of the Lyngdoh Commission’s guidelines extends beyond that.

As soon you enter the North campus, you are greeted with billboards of a grinning Arvind Kejriwal exhorting students to “vote for clean politics”. When I point out one of them to Panwar, he tells me there is nothing wrong in asking students to vote for clean politics. “People do not want to hear the right thing, you know,” he says.

What about the costs of these hoardings? According to Jatin Dahiya of the NSUI, which is the Congress’ student union, CYSS has installed hundreds of such hoardings across the city. Panwar says the cost has been borne by the “party”. “The student’s wing was being promoted by AAP for the last two months and it’s not just for the elections; prior to that the women’s wing was being promoted – it’s part of a strategy,” he tells me.

According to the Lyngdoh Commission’s directives, a candidate is entitled to spend a maximum of Rs 5,000.  However, the directives mention nothing about how much a party can spend –- a loophole that most student organisations exploit with great zeal.

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Printed pamphlets scattered in DU’s law faculty

NSUI, much like its parent party, the Congress, has suffered the most owing to the CYSS’ emergence.  “It’s difficult to compete with a party like the CYSS. This is almost like being pitted against AAP –- the CM, after all, is directly campaigning against us,” an NSUI worker tells me, when I ask him about his party’s chances.  The low morale of NSUI took a further hit after its presidential candidate Pradeep Vijayran was attacked while campaigning yesterday. “It was the CYSS – Kuldeep Bidhuri [the CYSS’ presidential candidate] is a strongman in the college he was attacked in; his men were behind it,” Dahiya claims. Even ABVP leaders I spoke to contended that Bhiduri orchestrated the attack. “He is an ex-student and is a powerful student leader there. In, fact the PGDAV is a CYSS bastion; no one else will dare attempting something like this,” an ABVP volunteer claims.

This does not seem to be the only instance in which CYSS has resorted to violence. According to leaders from the ABVP and NSUI, Rohit Chahal, the ABVP’s state president, was roughed up by CYSS volunteers on Tuesday evening. “They were all AAP members in their 30s and 40s – none of them were even students,” says an ABVP leader.

The other major party, the Left-leaning All India Students Association (AISA), also accuses CYSS of using the state government to bend rules. “The attendance of Rahul, their secretary was not verified when he went to file his nomination papers. Usually, that leads to immediate rejection of candidature, but somehow they managed to buy 24 hours and get the attendance verified,” claims Sunny Singh of the AISA. He added that this was truly a first, since neither Sheila Dixit nor Sushma Swaraj intervened to this level in DUSU elections.

CYSS’ Panwar calls it a conspiracy. “They are nervous, that’s why they are concocting stories,” he counters. According to Panwar, the CYSS had no hand in getting Vijayan beaten up.  However, he does admit that a skirmish had happened on Tuesday evening.  “Chahal had misbehaved with our volunteers,” he claims. Panwar then rattles off five more instances of ABVP volunteers supposedly misbehaving with CYSS’ female volunteers.  He also denies the AISA’s accusations. “It was verified by the head of the department but not the principal – it’s a totally unnecessary controversy. We will sweep the elections, just like AAP did,” he says.

Delhi University will vote tomorrow. To be precise, a small section will (voting percentage has been less than 40 per cent in the last few years).  True to form, the two parties that have violated the poll codes most brazenly – CYSS and ABVP – will end up at the top. It shouldn’t surprise anyone: it’s, after all, just another “democratic” exercise in the country.

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